Tag Archives: Kevin Durant

And the dawn comes up like thunder outer China crost the Bay. — Rudyard Kipling

Somewhere in the middle of this game I became convinced that the Warriors are a championship contender. I’ve known for some time that they had the players — I called their roster the best in the Western Conference before last season. But I’ve never had the confidence that they had the right coach, and the right basketball philosophy, to get deep into the playoffs. Until right now. Continue reading →

I think we can all agree after this fiasco that the one team the Warriors don’t want to see in the playoffs is the Thunder. They simply match up horribly against them. In this game, the playoff-ready Thunder ruthlessly exposed every major hole on the Warriors’ poorly constructed roster. Continue reading →

A few short days after I watched the Lakers compete hard against the Miami Heat, took a look at the Warriors schedule, and pronounced that the Warriors still have a tough road ahead to make the playoffs, I’m ready to take it all back. This Warriors team is going to the playoffs. Guaranteed. Continue reading →

That’s the beauty of Mike D’Antoni’s system… there’s so much space, so much creativity… you just be aggressive, you just attack. — Jeremy Lin

You finally got to see it tonight. Finally, after more than a year of a rookie GM adding the wrong pieces to the great Warriors core, and rookie coaches running the wrong plays, with the wrong lineups, in the wrong systems.

You saw it tonight, finally. The reason why David Lee was an all-star for Mike D’Antoni. The reason why Don Nelson traded for David Lee. Continue reading →

I’m not going to recap this Thunder game. Going to save my bullets. I would just be howling in the wind (and mixing my metaphors), because no one in the world believes this Warriors team should be able to beat the Thunder.

I’ll be doing a lot of scouting in the first round of the NBA playoffs, but there’s only one matchup that piques my interest. Portland v. Dallas could turn into a competitive series, depending on Marcus Camby’s health. Well, no, it might not even depend on that. But I’m not interested in that series. I don’t like the Blazers at +180 because they have one of the worst playoff coaches in the league. And I’m not interested in the Mavs, because, well, they’re the Mavs. I like to watch Mark Cuban’s face when they lose. Continue reading →

We saw a lot of great things in this Warriors win over the Thunder, not least among them Monta Ellis outshining Kevin Durant, and Stephen Curry and David Lee shutting up their critics. But those great performances were not what stood out the most about this game for me.

The newly big Warriors were thrashed by small ball in this game. If you don’t know already that the Thunder are a quintessential small ball team, let me explain. Forget about Nenad Krstic at center. Many of Nellie’s best teams had non-scoring defensive anchors at center. Andris Biedrins, for one. Shawn Bradley for another, who came within a Nowitzki knee injury in game 3 of the 2003 Conference Finals of winning a title. (Can you imagine the consternation of snake-oil salesmen like John Hollinger and Dave Berri if Shawn Bradley had won a title?) Continue reading →